I know you are saying you are not signing yourself up for another 30 years of torture by this bank but you effectively already did this when you signed the initial mortgage. Are you hoping for maybe them to write off some of the debt? What are you best case hoping for as an outcome?
I restructured with KBC recently on our investment property, I went in to discuss my options with them because my interest only period was ending and these were the options I was given (PTSB might give similar options):
1. Extend interest only period
With this option they would only do this on a 12 month basis. Which means we would have to reapply again in 12 months. Plus the term would decrease without the capital decreasing - meaning whenever we ended this agreement our total repayments would be even higher so for me this was not an option I wanted to go with if possible.
2. Extend interest only period & pay fixed amount off capital every month
This was a decent option for us which allowed us to at least put something off the capital and we would have gone with this option had they not extended our term.
3. Go onto full re payments
We could not afford this.
4. Extend term of mortgage
We went with this option as it made the repayments more manageable for us - still hard but manageable. We extended by 5 years and it brought our payments down by about €400 per month (mortgage €317,500, extended to 25 years).
Either way, whatever option you go with you will have to fill out a full financial statement and supply them with bank statements, etc., unless you go with returning to full repayments that is. So a bit of work involved.
PTSB standard variable rates are quiet a bit higher than other lenders at the moment and if they were not charging such rates your situtation would be very different - that is the most unfair thing about all of this! In my case my ppr mortgage is with PTSB over 35 years for approx. 300K and if I was with AIB on their standard variable rate I would be paying about €350 less per month! So talk to them about their rates and see can you push a rate change? They are offering 3.7% for new business customers at the moment - maybe they might move you onto that for even a year?? Although knowing PTSB this would be extremely hard sell for you.